A century ago, owning a brick henhouse was a real coup of a coop, something only well-to-do farmers could afford. At least this is what I’m told, as I pass the tidy, low-lying brick shelter that houses Tryon Farm’s clutch. I’m inclined to believe it: The roosters here possess a regal air (they’re massive) and the hens seem happy to haunt such a handsome roost. And well they should. Tryon Farm is an exemplary model for conservation-minded real estate development—a place where the chickens come before the eggs (they provide ambiance as well as the makings of a mean omelet), and land preservation is tantamount to growth.
The ecology in Michigan City, Indiana, where Tryon is located, and the nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is one of the most diverse in the country, and the ponds, dunes, and forest that thrive within the borders of Tryon are maintained and preserved by the Tryon Farm Institute, a nonprofit conservancy. Homeowners pay taxes solely on their home but contribute a flat rate to the maintenance of communal land, occasionally chipping in with a bit of the labor as well. (On this particular visit, a number of residents woke up early to help clear out overgrowth in the prairie.) But what truly distinguishes Tryon from other conservation communities and the bulk of new development in Michigan City is that its progressive development strategy is coupled with progressive architecture.
At Tryon, the best omelets are whipped up by resident and proprietess Claudia Geise in an 1890s brick farmhouse that has been converted to a bed-and-breakfast. Ironically enough, those who consider buying the modern homes here—small Cor-Ten steel boxes and berm houses scattered in the woods and dunes—find themselves at home among the B&B’s antique lace and florals.
A member of Tryon’s old guard, Geise chats with guests about the farm and construction. She was among the first to purchase a home in the community’s Farm Settlement, which is centered around the originalfarmhouse, outbuildings, and communal garden. Of the three completed housing clusters, known as “settlements,” the Farm was the first, and the buildings here most closely resemble traditional agrarian structures.
“It was nothing romantic,” says Geise, of her introduction to Tryon eight years ago. “I just stopped for gas.”
Geise’s cool, matter-of-fact demeanor melts at the mention of Ed Noonan, Tryon’s primary developer, who helped Geise realize her dream of owning a B&B. Geise, like nearly everyone who has fallen in love with the spirit of the community and the land at Tryon, first fell for Ed and Eve Noonan.
Since the Noonans bought the land in 1990, they have poured heart and soul (and about half a million dollars) into turning the farm’s 170 acres into a working sustainable development, complete with a natural wetlands sewage system, which operates independently of a municipal system, and biophilic berm houses that are embraced on all sides by wildflowers and native grasses. One hundred and fifty homes will dot the landscape when Tryon is fully built, but the Noonans’ plan calls for three-quarters of the land to remain undeveloped.
“We’re a little elderly to be doing this,” Eve says, without a hint of irony. While it’s true that many people in their 70s wouldn’t dare take on a 30-year mortgage, the Noonans are anything but elderly: Ed’s sly, youthful air is touched with a knowing, sage-like quality. And he seems to wear his heart on his sleeve. (Literally. For much of the visit he’s been wearing a sweatshirt with a red heart stitched to one sleeve.) He’s a softie with a strong vision—though, he says, he couldn’t pull it off without Eve, who he insists truly softens (and sweetens) what is, at the end of the day, a real estate deal.
Almost half complete as of summer 2007, Tryon’s 74 homes are an exercise in site planning and context. The houses range from approximately $150,000 to $500,000 and from 625 to about 2,400 square feet, and come in a variety of models with structural names like Flat-Top, Round-Top, and Broken Long House, each with integrity enough to give subdivision housing design a good name—no small feat. Through two firms, Edward Noonan Associates and the 10-person Chicago-based Chicago Associates Planners and Architects, or CAPA, Ed acts as both architect and developer for the project.
Tryon’s specific mission tends to attract a self-selecting group of residents who share similar beliefs; more often than not, it’s the small differences that divide them. For instance, some residents may be concerned with invasive plants, while others are more interested in the architecture and care less about maintaining a specific ecology. Thus, differences arise as to where and how communally pooled money is invested back into the property.
I get a sense of Ed’s perspective of the place as we drive around Tryon on a particularly soggy June day—the windshield wipers lazily sloshing in time to a languid tale about Tryon’s communal garden, which turns out to be more of a parable: When Tryon started out, the communal garden was modest and everyone workedon it together. It was so successful, they decided to make it bigger, but the bigger it got, the more burdensome it became, and eventually it went to seed. So the community switched to personally allocated raised beds, which have been more successful: “Now people weed their own, and then they go weed their neighbors’, but they wouldn’t weed a common garden. I think that’s one of the biggest problems with community life,” Ed explains, “Whatever is yours I accept, whatever is mine I accept, but whatever is split is hard.”
Ed and Eve are the first to admit to the difficulties of operating a community where land and labor are a shared expense. “It’s more interdependent than a regular subdivision—but it is still a subdivision,” says Ed. “We have to break that territorial imperative of the lot.” Ever since it started, the community has been self-governing, with homeowners having equal votes, regardless of the size of their home, and so far it appears to be working. Since opening in 2001, Tryon Farm has retained nearly every resident that has bought into the development. Most re-sales are generated by people upgrading within the community.
Whatever its trials, Tryon Farm’s community spirit remains. On Saturday evenings residents gather in the garden for cocktails, and during the summer they screen movies on the side of the barn. CAPA also hopes that the newest settlement, called the Garden Village, will improve community relations by acting as a social hub. “It’s supposed to be the central part of the farm where you come in and you’ve got a lot of diversity and it’s more communal [in its layout], whereas some of the Woods houses are sort of secluded,” says CAPA’s onsite manager Scott Kuchta. “We hope that that’s going to attract possibly younger people, but at least younger in mind-set.”
Right now Tryon grows and harvests only livestock feed, but Ed and Tom Forman, CAPA’s head planner and designer, set aside land for a community-supported agricultural farm in Tryon’s early planning stages, should there ever be an interest in setting one up. “If somebody were to come along and say, ‘I’d like ten acres,’ we’d say, ‘Hey, use it, we won’t charge you for it, if you take care of it, and make good on it, and support community-supported agriculture,’” Ed explains.
He likes to barter. According to Ed, a handshake and his word are as good as any written contract. This live-and-let-live attitude has served Tryon well and has helped soften the edge of the rough-and-tumble world of real estate development. As architects Dawn Heid and Gary Beyerl can attest, Tryon is all for fostering an independent creative spirit: Ed has encouraged the architects to build three homes of their own design (respectful of the Tryon aesthetic). Ed’s attitude is that positive, community-minded endeavors—be it with farming, social events, or architecture—bring the same benefits to the community that conscientious site-planning and ecologically sensitive building bring to the natural environment. They allow it to thrive.
